Windows 10 breaks BOINC screen saver.

[Jord van der Elst]

Hi all,

I know that Eric Korpela had a thread about this, but its name was that of a private message. A bit difficult to search on, etc.

We get more and more people on the BOINC forums who complain that since they updated to Windows 10 from Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, that the BOINC screen saver doesn't work anymore.

Full thread
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=10422

E.g.
" Ever since the day i started it in Windows 10, i noticed that i get no preview, or screensaver. I don't really care too much since i did notice that my points per day tripled with the Windows 10 update, but i do leave my monitors on once every so often, and the protection would be nice. I'm running 2 GeForce 760's in SLI with drivers from NVIDIA GeForce experience constantly updating them. Also running 5 SIIG USB 3.0 dual monitor adapters to handle the 6 monitors i have. i don't get screensavers on any of the screens."

and
"Hi there, guess what? Since upgrading to Windows 10 BOINC screen saver will not run too. Ran fine on 8.1. It appears it's trying to start once every second, however when I look under 'tasks' in BOINC Mgr it show all is running fine. Sounds like lots of people are having the issue. Any ideas? Thank you ..."

Now, in some cases it can possibly be that Windows Update installs a driver version that doesn't contain OpenGL, but I'm not sure it's true in all of these cases.

I'll ask people to install GPU Caps Viewer to see if they have OpenGL installed. Anything else?

Ta,

-- Jord van der Elst.

[Jacob Klein]

See if they have any non-keyboard non-mouse USB device attached, and if so, see if the screen saver starts working properly when they detach that device. You might also see if they are noticing strange behavior, when testing the "Suspend when computer is in use" setting with the "in the last 1 minute".

I'll reiterate the problem that I'm seeing.

Basically, when my Logitech G27 USB racing wheel is connected to the machine, Windows erroneously reads its inputs (which are slightly oscillating despite me not touching them) as activity. This causes BOINC to see "activity", keeping my work suspended even if I wait longer than a minute. And it also causes the ScreenSaver/Sleep/DisplayOff timeouts to either not go off at all, or to erroneously wake up. I have confirmed the issue with another user who has a USB joystick.

It has been happening to me for months, and it only happens on Windows 10 while a user is logged in. Microsoft has not fixed it yet. And if you are hitting on a separate issue entirely, then I apologize. But I do think it is likely the same issue as mine, and if it is, they should be contacting Microsoft.

Jacob

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[Jord van der Elst]

Something one of the users wrote in the thread:

***************
"I managed to get the screensaver run, but I don't know exactly how. At first it did NOT run.

I went to Windows personalize... lock screen... screen saver settings. I chose "BOINC". I didn't change anything under the "Settings..." tab. Preview run OK. I set "Wait" to 1 minutes and apply + OK. Then exit everything and waited. No open programs, no movement, only Boinc client running in the background. Screensaver never run.

Then I located Boinc program directory and boincsvr.exe. I tried all the compatibility modes for that file (file properties... compatibility... "Disable display scaling...", "Run this program as admimistrator" and one at a time all the different Windows versions). That didn't make it work.

Then I went back to Windows personalize... lock screen... screen saver settings. I see there was also a screensaver called "PBOINC". It had been there already at the first time. Now I chose that "PBOINC" and tried the preview. Screensaver only flashed on the screen, but I think that happened because maybe I accidentally moved the mouse a little bit.

Now comes the strange part. There was no more screensaver called "PBOINC". It had disappeared from the list after that short preview. The regular "BOINC" had been automatically chosen again.

Well, then I tried preview for that regular "BOINC" again and it worked. I went back to desktop and waited.... and now the screensaver RUN after 1 minute !

Then I started to remove the compatibility modes for the boincsvr.exe. In the end, I had removed them all and screensaver was still able to run after 1 minute.

Ps. I had set the "Screen timeout setting" to "Never" already long time ago. I didn't touch that setting.

My setup:
W10 build 10525, Boinc 7.6.8 x64, Nvidia GTX 960 + driver 355.80, this host is only crunching for Einstein@Home at the moment"
****************

Looking on the Interweb, http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-Software-Recovery/Screensaver-and-power-otions-not-working-after-Win10-update/td-p/5201176 shows it is not a BOINC problem.

-- Jord van der Elst.

[Jacob Klein]

For what it's worth... Here's an important update.

Microsoft released a new Windows 10 Insider build today, Build 10532, and it appears to fix the "activity detection" problem I was having with my USB Logitech G27 Racing Wheel. My testing confirms that, for the purposes of detecting activity to disengage the Screen Saver or to turn the display back on, Windows correctly no-longer detects activity (phantom or real) from my wheel and pedals. This also fixes the BOINC problem, where the "In Use" settings would think that my system was always in use because of the phantom inputs.

I believe the fix will be sent, at some point, to regular Windows users, sometime on or before the "Threshold Wave 2" release scheduled for sometime in October 2015.

Kind Regards,
Jacob

---

From: jacob_...@msn.com
To: els...@gmail.com; boinc...@ssl.berkeley.edu
CC: boinc...@googlegroups.com; boin...@ssl.berkeley.edu
Subject: RE: [boinc_dev] Windows 10 breaks BOINC screen saver.
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2015 13:46:12 -0400

[Yavanius Gekkō Misuto]

Have you looked to see if the update available as a separate stand-alone download (or whatever update it is in)?

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[Jacob Klein]

To my knowledge (and from my experience, dual booting between "Windows 10 Pro x64 Insider Preview" and "Windows 10 Pro x64 Release")... The solution *only* exists in the installation of Insider Preview Build 10532, and does not yet exist in the form of a downloadable update for either Insider Preview or Release.

---

Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2015 17:34:31 -0700
Subject: Re: [boinc_admin] RE: [boinc_dev] Windows 10 breaks BOINC screen saver.
From: yava...@gmail.com
To: jacob_...@msn.com
CC: els...@gmail.com; boinc...@ssl.berkeley.edu; boinc...@googlegroups.com; boin...@ssl.berkeley.edu